Startup Roundup: Hailo Series B funding, Influitive, Interview Rocket

In FP Tech Desk’s Startup Roundup series, we take a look at Canadian startup news from the past week.

Hailo raises $30.6M

Mobile cab hailing service Hailo, which made its North American debut in Toronto last fall, announced that it had raised $30.6-million in Series B investment this week. Funding was led by Union Square Ventures, best known for investments in Twitter, Foursquare, Kickstarter and Toronto-based online writing community Wattpad.

Hailo also announced it has hired Tom Barr, former head of coffee business at Starbucks, as its new president and COO for the American market.

The funding will help in two areas, Hailo founder and CEO Jay Bregman said in a phone interview. “One is to accelerate the growth in the cities [we’re] already in,” he said. “And two is to rapidly expand into new markets, such as New York and Tokyo.”

In existing markets such as Toronto, “it’s about increased marketing efforts [and] getting the word out … what it is, how it works.”

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Also included in the funding round was participation from Sir Richard Branson, Phenomen Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Red Swan Ventures. Existing investors Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, and Atomico Ventures also contributed funds, with a total of US$50.6-million capital raised to date.

Mr. Bregman also expressed particular interest in applying the Hailo model to products and services beyond hailing taxis, though he wouldn’t go into specifics.

“Ultimately we believe that what we’ve done is stumble upon an interesting use case that people can use pay for things that can come to them,” Mr. Bregman said.

Going forward, Hailo is looking hard at expanding into other Canadian cities too, with Mr. Bregman naming Montreal as one potential market. The company is also working on a strategy to serve entire regions, rather than just one city at a time.

“The uptake amongst Torontonians [from] our drivers and passengers has been outstanding,” he said. “We’re very excited about the growth prospects not only throughout Toronto, but Canada.”

Influitive acquires “social conversations startup” Engagio

Influitive Corp., an advocate marketing service, acquired fellow Toronto-based company Engagio earlier this week. Influitive launched a platform called Advocate Hub last year, which offers incentives for influential advocates – often outspoken clients and users – to discuss and evangelize a product or service with their peers.

“The combination of Engagio and Influitive will create the type of visionary product that B2B advocate marketing needs,” wrote Influitive CEO Mark Organ in a blog post announcing the acquisition earlier this week. The entire Engagio team will be joining Mr. Organ’s staff.

Several pieces of Engagio’s technology will be integrated into Influitive’s AdvocateHub, according to Engagio founder and CEO William Mougayar’s own announcement.

“You can expect to see us facilitate the tracking, and monitoring of social conversations,” Mr. Mougayar wrote, “as well as providing further intelligence around Advocate activities.”

Halifax-based Interview Rocket Ltd. announced on Tuesday that it had raised a combined $250,000 in seed funding from a number of sources, including the First Angel Network, India’s Cabot Technology Solutions and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

Created “by recruiters, for recruiters,” the service aims to improve the recruiting and interviewing by having candidates and employers record short online videos for one another in response to preset questions. Responses are timed, and Interview Rocket claims the process can be up to ten times faster than traditional interviewing methods.

According to a press release, “the funding will allow Interview Rocket to accelerate the development of new features and implement a comprehensive marketing strategy.”

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